How Unforgiveness Steals Your Joy

Most people don’t pay much attention to unforgiveness; not in the church or out. It’s mentioned here and there but it’s not the main course; nope not unforgiveness. Yet it’s a bigger worldwide killer than any other disease on the planet. Unforgiveness steals your joy and life in ways you can’t imagine.

Unforgiveness keeps you impatient. Most unforgiving people are impatient. They just are. They want everything done at the time they want, in the way they want; and of course ‘now’. There is no ability to see any other perspective because well; there isn’t one. It is only one person’s timeline of people not doing what they need to for that one person who just proves continuously to have no tolerance for others. There is no joy in impatience for the unforgiver or those around the unforgiver. Now of course it’s not to say all patient people are forgivers; but those who are impatient typically aren’t as forgiving and have no joy.

Unforgiveness keeps you self- focused. It gets tiring because focused on self all the time. I had to learn that lesson the hard way. Those who are unforgiving are self-focused for a variety of reasons and through that; there cannot be any joy. When you get tired of yourself; where else is there to focus? Yes everyone alive has been hurt and experienced pain but it’s only when we forgive that we are able to see life from the perspective of the person that we believe hurt us. In the case of my biological mother; I hated her for most of my life because she abandoned. After we met I learned that she didn’t show up to our final parental meeting because the case worker gave her an ultimatum: sell me to him for 10k or never see your daughter again. Which would you choose? She said no, he changed our appointment and that was it! It was later learned he was buying and selling babies on the Canadian black market. When we are self focused and unforgiving we miss out on seeing and learning from others the real truth and it can cost us. It stole my joy for decades.

Unforgiveness keeps you isolated. Unforgiving people tend to be bitter, resentful; and a few other things too. It’s hard to be around those who complain, are negative and flat out miserable. That’s what unforgiveness does! It keeps you where you are which is living in the past. Those harboring unforgiveness will find themselves isolated because people living and experiencing life are filled with joy and your unforgiveness will keep you isolated from all the good things because good people know better than to surround themselves with negative nonsense.

Unforgiveness will wreck havoc on your life if you are not careful. With over 30 symptoms it creeps in unknowingly because it’s sly. Most people don’t study unforgiveness on their own and they just believe that lip service works; when in reality they still have all the symptoms. I’ve been there; I’ve seen all too often. If you find that on this day you have no joy, peace, or excitement in your life just ask yourself who you need to forgive. And then go get your joy back!